[WEB4LIB] Forcing a click-thru legal agreement (no robots, etc.)

[Genny Engel]

Actually, I have spent my time since starting here attempting to REDUCE
the number of clicks required to get from our home page to actual
information.  Luckily none of our database vendors has ever brought up
this issue and I hope they never do.  Since all our vendor databases
require a library card number to be entered into a form, most robots
wouldn't get into the databases, unless they were specifically crafted
to use a stolen library card number.

Are you looking into this because you have actual evidence of robots
harvesting the databases?  Or just as a CYA?  I would have thought if
the vendors were actually getting twitchy about this issue, they would
have started putting up these click-through pages on the databases
themselves.


Genny Engel
Internet Librarian
Sonoma County Library
gengel at sonoma.lib.ca.us
707 545-0831 x581

>>> "David Moore" <mooredp at email.uah.edu> 11/30/04 02:36PM >>>
Has anyone set up your library database access to force a page of
legal
wording to be acknowledged by the user before the user is taken through
the
search page? If so, would you share your example? We are looking into
doing
something like this, in order to more effectively get the word out that
use
of robots or any other repetitive downloading of articles from our
databases
is not prohibited.